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The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane
1858
John Quidor
Born: Tappan, New York 1801
Died: Jersey City, New Jersey 1881
oil on canvas
26 7/8 x 33 7/8 in. (68.3 x 86.1 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Museum purchase made possible in part by the Catherine Walden Myer Endowment, the Julia D. Strong Endowment, and the Director's Discretionary Fund
1994.120
Smithsonian American Art Museum
2nd Floor, South Wing
Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" inspired Quidor to paint the climactic moment from this famous tale. Ichabod Crane is a prickly and stuck-up schoolmaster and a bumbling suitor for the lovely Katrina, who uses him to make her beau jealous. The pompous twit is no match for the clever locals, and he disappears, chased away by the headless horseman through a darkened wood. Irving's educated nitwit, strapping local boy and flirtatious beauty would reappear as folk characters throughout American literature in the nineteenth century.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
Keywords
Equestrian
Landscape - forest
Landscape - time - evening
Literature - character - Headless Horseman
Literature - character - Icahabod Crane
Literature - Irving - Legend of Sleepy Hollow
painting
paint - oil
fabric - canvas
About John Quidor
Born: Tappan, New York 1801 Died: Jersey City, New Jersey 1881
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